http://parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Bronfenbrenner/Bronfenbrenner.html

Hey guys I was looking up some stuff about Bronfenbrenner and I ran across this article, Growing Chaos in the lives of children youth and families: How can we turn it around? by Bronfenbrenner and I found a quote I thought was interesting,

He talks about their being many ways of knowing and how science is the only way of knowing where you are obligate to prove yourself wrong. He mentions science in the mode of discovery.

I haven't read the entire piece but thought it may be of interest. If it is hopefully you'll read it if not have a great day anyway! (Oh the link is at the top of the page)

Lewin and parenting

I really enjoyed this reading. I was originally interested in contextual effects on children's development and I used a part of Lewin's theory in my thesis before so it was interesting to deeply look at field theory.
Specifically, the idea that people's reality level of the psychological future can be formed through subjective perception was interesting. Also, the sentence that 'the psychological past and the future are simultaneous parts of the psychological field existing at a given time' was impressive because he looked at the present with people's perceptions on the past and the future. The past, the present, and the future seemed to be highly tied in his theory. I've been thought that the present is important for individual but the past and the future should be considered as context of their life.
In addition, when I think about 'parenting' which is my research interest, I could think that parents' perceptions on parenting would be more important than just considering normed parenting styles. There are numerous studies about the relationship between parenting styles and children's development. However, there is only few research on parents' perceptions on parenting which can subjectively affect children's development. I thought that parents and children's perceptions on their experiences or situations will be important for both parents and children's life.

Lewin and life space

I really liked reading Lewin and thinking about the three areas of interest in psychology, life space, the processes in the physical/social world that do not affect the life space, and the boundary zone of the life space. When thinkning about my research interests particular adolescent development and their ecological environment I felt like it fit into both the life space and the boundary zone. For instance, my work with Anastasia Snyder focuses on youth expectations and parent expectations and educational attainment. I feel like this deals with the life space, the current motivations and desires of the youth at a given time and assessing those. Then going ahead and looking at their current educational attainment at a given time. To me parental expectations fall in the boundary zone of the adolescent's life space since they are not measured as youth's perceptions of their parent's expectations but given by the parent's themselves.

The discussion of food's existence and the knowledge of food's existence and how only the knowledge of the food's existence being must be represented in the individual's life space was interesting to me and made sense in that it is only one's knowledge of the food's presence or lack there of that can be represented in the life space as this knowledge then affects one's behavior. In my ideas about parental expectations for youth it is only the youth's knowledge or perception of their parents expectations or the lack of parental expectations that affects the youth's behavior and thus should be represented in their life space.

Perhaps I am unsure of Lewin's point here regarding understanding how the past may affect the situation at a given time. Is it only an individual's perceptions of the past and their future (their realtiy and wish levels of the past as well as their hope and planning for the future) that can be included in the present situation or the field at a given time?
That was my understanding of it. Did anyone else agree or have a different understanding? Let me know.

Lewin

So to make sense of Lewin's ideas, I'm trying to relate them to the research I have been a part of lately... one of my main interests has been attachment theory. In a way, I feel the social psychological folks interpretation of attachment theory fits with Lewin's ideas. So while attachment theory emphasizes the importance of early life experiences with primary caregivers as a foundation to "internal working models" about love and closeness, social psychologist are most often interested in assessing peoples current feelings/perceptions about close relationships (as opposed to developmental psychologists who take a more psychoanalytic approach) to see how this might impact their functioning in relationships. In a way I feel this fits with Lewin's statements about their subjective expectations about the future or assessments of the past.

So, would Lewin argue that drawing connections between parental sensitivity in early childhood and let's say, teenage social functioning, is not appropriate under field theory? And that if such associations are studies, it makes more sense to pursue them under a different name and for the sake of statistically, objectively, predicting future events across a population?

Applications

So I've been thinking really hard about how I'm going to apply all of this great information that we have been exposed to this quarter to my class next quarter. So far I really feel very strongly toward applying a combination of Bandura and Dewey's perspectives in my class. I really like the way he talks about learning, and what steps he believes are necessary in order for learning to occur. So far, my thinking about application in class consists of presenting the topics that we will cover a week in advance. For the next few days, I thought I would ask the students to read the material, and post (kind of like a blog), about what really piqued their interest and what they would like to see presented in the following class. Then, I would be able to develop a presentation that consists of models - media, visual, role playing, etc., that the students would watch. Then, I would ask them to form their discussion groups - which last quarter had no more than 5 students in each group - in order to practice the skills that I have shown them. Then, we could come back together and discuss why these skills are important based on their knowledge of reading about them, seeing them in practice, and them practicing themselves.

Dunno, just an idea...

lunch?

It just so happens that this Thursday (3/10) I do not have stats lab directly following our class - so if folks wanted to, I would love to grab a quick lunch with everyone. There is a great Indian buffet across the street from Caribou or of course Five Guys or Graffiti burger right close by on 5th too - I'm up for whatever!! (Doesn't bonding over food relate to some archetype?) ;)

archetypes...

So I find myself struggling still with this archetype concept and exactly how exactly these archetypes influence a person. How many archetypes are there? Did Jung attempt to quantify them or is that somewhat against his work (I'm leading toward the latter as he seems reluctant to be overly specific about particular archetypes and to walk a fine line between describing one enough to show its existence and becoming over prescriptive with how it manifests).

I think I may buy Freud's argument that we like distruction more than I buy this whole notion of archetypes... but I worry that I am missing part of Jung's argument.